


Insert Coffee to Begin

by moriann



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Engineering Mishaps, Gen, Pre-Movie(s), Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:40:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1916649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moriann/pseuds/moriann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The major running themes of Darcy's internship so far: coffee, horrifying noises, bizarre science,  gonzo engineering, and googling things that will probably put her on a terrorist watch list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insert Coffee to Begin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burning_Nightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/gifts).



> Many thanks to VelvetMouse for the beta.

Darcy was woken up by a drawn-out cacophony of clanging noises, followed immediately by a heavy thud. Two weeks into this internship, she had already learnt to take her blessings where she could, so she spared a moment to appreciate the fact that she slept on a futon and so when she flailed awake and got tangled in the blankets, she only had less than two inches to fall before she hit the ground. Her glasses were somewhere on the desk above her and without them the room was looking really blurry, but the source of the racket was obvious.

Jane was standing over a heap of tangled wires, screws, what looked like the casing of her latest attempt at a portable industrial-strength battery, and a big overturned tool box. She had her hands on her hips and was dejectedly poking the jumbled pile of equipment with a sneaker.

‘It’s too weak,’ said Jane. ‘It didn’t even last through the night! How am I supposed to gather any serious data when my equipment won’t even keep recording for more than a few hours?’ She gave it one last poke, which inevitably loosened something at the top of the stack, and it fell down on the concrete floor with a resounding bang. Jane ignored the falling tool and instead made impatient hand gestures at Darcy. ‘Come on, we have things to do. I think I’m close to figuring out what went wrong.’

Darcy spared a look at the clock on one of the monitors and groaned. In a last ditch effort, she closed her eyes and opened them back up again, to see if that would make the numbers change. No such luck.

‘It’s not even six a.m.! I need things first. Glasses. Coffee. And preferably more sleep.’ She was going to expand on this list, but she was interrupted by Jane walking up to her, waving the aforementioned glasses in front of her face.

Darcy grabbed them, put them on and squinted up at Jane, who was bouncing on the balls of her feet and almost vibrating with enthusiasm. She immediately regretted this decision, because sharper vision somehow also meant that everything around her was so much brighter and the early morning sun in the middle of the desert should only ever be experienced on a postcard or a time-lapse gif.

‘Did you even go to sleep or did you sit through the night glaring at the readouts?’

Jane waved her hand to dismiss her concerns.

‘Yes, but I’m good, I’ve had coffee. And a breakfast.’ Jane gestured to the desk by the window, on which Darcy could vaguely see a pile of familiar empty wrappers and plastic cups.

‘Oh god, Jane, dumping four packets of instant coffee into a yoghurt is not coffee, it’s a damn abomination and I don’t want it coming anywhere near me.’ 

‘The yoghurt had chocolate chips in it. And granola. I’m pretty sure that counts as a well rounded meal.’

Darcy lowered her head to let it rest on the floor. It looked like it was going to be one of _those_ days. 

––

Darcy, despite being barely awake, managed to wrangle Jane down the street to the diner, where she beelined it to the counter and resisted the urge to just grab the whole pot and chug the coffee straight out of it. That would probably get her banned, and she had at least four more weeks here. She had an uneasy feeling that she’d need the regular supply of coffee and greasy food to stay alive.

Once the caffeine started hitting her system, she made her way to the table Jane had commandeered while she was communing with her coffee. Jane had already managed to spread out three notebooks, a laptop, pens and pencils, and was alternating scribbling something on a paper napkin and in one of the notebooks, muttering under her breath. Darcy saw that one of the notes as a schematic of an electrical circuit, which probably meant it was a new design for the battery whose components currently littered their floor. The napkin seemed to contain a shopping list for the project, so she pulled it and the laptop to her and began searching for the supplies.

It was probably a testament to how sleep-deprived she was that it took her a minute to register the fact that in just two weeks she became someone who can accurately recognise circuit schematics. She didn’t even have the time to be properly horrified at this realisation, because the waitress chose this moment to bring their breakfast over and Darcy barely managed to rescue her cup of coffee when Jane’s hand darted out to steal a toast. As it was, it only sloshed a bit over the top of the mug and left a thin circular mark on the page. She carefully blotted it out with a napkin before it could spread and smudge anything important – they’d learnt that lesson last week, when an unfortunate incident with stains made by spilled instant ramen caused them to incorrectly assemble the three giant sensor arrays on their roof and cause a cascading power failure. So far, no one discovered that the electrical surge that caused a city-wide blackout started with them and Darcy really hoped it would stay that way.

Jane absent-mindedly wiped her fingers on the leg of her jeans and stretched out her hand to grab her mug and hold it out for another refill.

‘Oh, and we’ll need better data servers too. They’re barely keeping up with the amount of information we’re already getting from the sensors,’ she said without taking her eyes off the page, on which equations were now being added next to the diagrams.

Darcy nodded and started googling the items on the list. It turned out that one of the alloys Jane wanted was something used almost exclusively in weapons. 

She was sure that if it were true that the NSA was spying on everyone at all times, any minute now a team of overly serious men in black was going to show up and cart them off to a jail.


End file.
